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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25985431">Polaroid</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrix02/pseuds/Beatrix02'>Beatrix02</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Boyz (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bad Ending, BoyxBoy, M/M, Sad, bbangnyu, they’re together tho</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:00:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,695</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25985431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrix02/pseuds/Beatrix02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Younghoon looks at some polaroids and remembers Chanhee.</p><p>Bbangnyu|| 2020</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Choi Chanhee | New/Kim Younghoon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Polaroid</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi, this is my first story here, so I’m a little overexcited ahah.</p><p>I hope you like it, I put a lot of effort into writing and then translating this story, since this was first written in Italian (my first language) and later translated to English.<br/>(Original one in Italian on Wattpad with the same title, by @ hobimysun_)</p><p>I am sorry for the angst ahahah.</p><p>⚠️TW: suicide and death⚠️<br/>don’t read if you’re uncomfortable!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“</em>
  <em>C’mon, another one! Let’s take another one!” The pink-haired boy exclaimed, with his usual joyful smile adorning his face. We just took a snapshot with the new camera I gave him the day before as a gift for his birthday and he already wanted to take another one, maybe as a memory of that day or just for the pleasure of having one more.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I, for my part, could only smile and nod, yielding to the adorable enthusiasm that had never abandoned the one who was now my boyfriend for three years. In fact, since I met him when I was twelve, he had always been the lively one of the two of us, the one always smiling and being optimistic, who was always able to see the good side of things and people; he had always been the one who even when he was suffering, he hid it behind a smile and carried on, without ever showing his weaknesses and agonies to anyone. <strong>Now I’d prefer he did it.</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>I posed for the photo, while he was adjusting himself between my arms and looking for the best angle to capture us, and I raised the corners of my mouth as much as I could to look at my best in that memory that would remain forever, even after we vanished. However, I was pictured with an expression of genuine surprise because of the younger’s lips that had unexpectedly leaned on my cheek, leaving on it the pinkish strawberry lip gloss drawing of his small lips.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hoonie! You’re adorable with that expression!” I heard his laughter ringing in my ears a few moments later, when our faces were appearing on the glossy paper that had come out of the device.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You caught me off guard, I had been preparing myself to look at my best in that picture!” I protested, leaning toward him to observe the result of that shot. “See? Look at my face!” I squealed, keeping to complain about the ridiculous facial expression with which I was immortalised.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Shut up. You’re as handsome as always, my prince.” Then he said, calling me with that nickname he gave me as a joke since I dressed up like a fairy tale prince for the carnival party during my last year of high school. I didn’t complain about it though, I liked being his prince. <strong>I always will be.</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I demand to take another one, otherwise…” I started my blackmail but instead of finishing it I threw myself directly at him, grabbing his narrow hips where I started tickling his sensitive skin. I knew weak spot, every single inch of his body was etched in my memory. I knew where he was tickled; I knew where just a touch could give him pleasure or where he would feel pain even with a caress. I knew Choi Chanhee more than I knew myself, <strong>yet it hadn’t been enough.</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>He burst into laugh and I was delighted with that angelic sound, while he began squirming of that park, which was scruffy but perfect in our eyes. It was the park where we met then years before that moment. It was where we started loving each other three years before; the place of our first kiss, of our first “I love you”. That park ruined by the time was the place of our love; it was our place, our safe place. The bench where we were sitting in disarray had our names engraved on her wood as an eternal mark of our passage.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I stopped torturing him just a couple of minutes later, now I too shaken by laughter, and I left the smallest just a few moments to recover before involving him in a sweet kiss that lasted for several seconds slow as hours. I then disconnected our lips to merge our dark eyes in their place.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Forever, will you promise me? We’ll be together forever, you and I until the end, and even after. Forever, regardless of everything else.” I spoke in a low tone, keeping my pupils fixed in his, trying to read his soul, trying to figure out what he was feeling.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But I wasn’t able to. Despite he seemed to be an exceedingly extroverted, open and easy to read boy, Choi Chanhee never let anyone figure out what he really felt or thought. Not even I, who knew him perfectly, could sneak into his mind. I had never given it too much weight, though. I just thought he was a very reserved boy, without questioning myself too much about the reason; “he’s just like this”, I always said to myself. <strong>I was wrong.</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>He was slightly surprised and confused by that serious question of mine, unexpected in a moment so cheerful and carefree; but still, the smile never left his face. “Of course I promise you, Younghoon-hyung. We will be always together, you and I, forever. ‘Till the end and even after, regardless of everything else.” He stated quietly, partly repeating my words, before leaning over to kiss me again as to seal the promise just made.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In that moment when he spoke, I noticed a strange note in his voce that left me confused for an instant. But I let it go, too eager to return that strawberry-flavoured slight touch on my lips. <strong>I made a mistake, I shouldn’t have ignored it.</strong></em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong>04.27.2020</strong>
</p><p>Now, one year after that day, I fiddle with those pictures between my fingers, looking at them without actually seeing them, as if it could help me find a way to go back in time to that moment to enjoy it a little more. Now, after one year without that pink haired boy in my life, I wonder if I shouldn’t have dug deeper into his eyes to find his soul and fix the cracks that adorned it; I wonder if I couldn’t have done something, if I could have made sure he didn’t leave.</p><p>Now sitting on our bench, the one with our names engraved, I look at the park around me and I can’t see anything but us in every spot. But it isn’t a faded memory at all. I vividly see our figures, as if we’re really there; as if I was nothing but an outside spectator of our moments. As if I was a passerby who stops to observe two kids meeting each other, two teenagers discovering each other until they become two lovers who love each other like there were only the two of them in the whole world.</p><p>I see the two nearly teenagers from eleven years ago, running into one another on the colourful slide, at the time still shiny and not covered in writings and scribbles like now. I see the two little boys from six years ago sitting under the big tree in the centre of the park, while they begin to discover each other, to figure out who they really are. Then I see, going forward by a year, two boys near the adult age, sitting on this same bench where I sit now, while they kiss for the first time, admitting for the first time their feelings. Finally, I can see the two young adults from last year, living their usual life, thoughtless and full of their love, while sitting here at my place with a light blue camera and two pictures in their hands. I see them, and I envy them. I envy them so much.</p><p>If I had known that those were my last moments with him, I would at least have tried to do something to stop time, to get stuck at that day. If I had known what was going to happen just a few hours after sunset, I wouldn’t have slept, in the hope that not falling asleep could stop the next day from arriving and with it, the news that was going to destroy me. If I had known… I still couldn’t have done anything.</p><p>I didn’t know he was suffering, I didn’t get it. I didn’t get how much he hid from me, I didn’t even imagine it. I always thought he was one of those cheerful, always smiling and to all appearances extroverted guys, but actually extremely reserved. I never thought he could be hiding all that pain from me. I didn’t get it, I didn’t get how much he was destroyed. I didn’t get that he was so broken, so unfixable. If I had understood it, I would have tried to fix him…</p><p>Can we really fix a person though? We can try… we can put a bandage on every wound and continuously medicate it, waiting for it to not hurt anymore, but the scar would be there anyway. Yet there are wounds that probably never heal. Choi Chanhee was full of them, and I never noticed.</p><p>During all the years we spent together, that boy went through so much… and I never became aware of it. That tiny boy, apparently so fragile, had brought so much weight on that tiny shoulders for so long. He was so strong for so many years, without ever complaining or asking for help, that at the end he surrendered. He endured for a time that probably seemed infinite to him, and finally the dark overwhelmed him and swallowed him.</p><p>If I only knew, I’d have tried to ease the load for him; I’d have tried to make him feel better. I would have tried for real, and maybe I would have been able to have him with me for a little longer. But I didn’t know, so I couldn’t do anything.</p><p>Choi Chanhee had been like a storm in a sultry summer to me. When I was twelve, I was alone. I didn’t have friends, I was locked in myself, I didn’t want anyone. But he had come in my life in a spring afternoon and brought with him a tornado of cheerfulness so powerful that was impossible for me to ignore it and continue with my life as before. It seemed impossible to not be his friend, so much that over time I fell hopelessly in love with him. He had been my breath of fresh air in a suffocating summer, but the relief had lasted, in my opinion, too little and it had left me utterly without air.</p><p> </p><p>I move my gaze from the spot where I was staring at some minutes ago, from the spot where it has remained all the time while I was reliving all of our moments together, and I look back to the photos in my hands. I observe for a moment our smiling faces trapped in the shot, lingering on the one beside mine. I try to find a crack in that smile, a sign that tells me that I had some hints to understand how much he was suffering but I didn’t catch them. However, I don’t find anything. His smile is perfect as it always has been, maybe not authentic, but perfect. Nothing could make me think he was faking it, I wouldn’t have believed it.</p><p>I drop my research, aware of the fact that I will never find anything in this two pictures that might reveal to me that my little hurricane of joy was actually trapped in a vortex of pain. Instead I look down to the white band under our faces.</p><p>
  <em>“Hoonie and Chanie, 04/27/2019</em>
</p><p>
  <em>forever♡</em>
  <em>„</em>
</p><p>That had been written by his elegant handwriting, now a year ago. <em>Hoonie and Chanie forever</em>, he wrote, just to take his own life after few hours.</p><p>I am grateful to him for wanting to take those pictures that day, at least I have a permanent memory of our last day together. Nevertheless, I am angry at him for lying to me in that way. <em>Forever you and I</em>, he promised me, and then he abandoned me without any warning, any goodbye.</p><p><em>“Maybe he did it for me”</em>, I repeated this phrase to myself so many times during just one year that I started to hate it. <em>“Maybe he wanted to leave me a happy memory of him, he didn’t want me to be worried until the very end”</em>, this is another one of the things I’ve been repeating myself over and over again, one of the explanations I tried to give to his behaviour; and I believed it for a little while, I’ve even been grateful to him for wanting to preserve the joyful memory of himI still have, but then I felt so frustrated and angry. If he asked me for help, I would have tried to help him. I’d tried to have more than his memory now…</p><p>But he didn’t. He preferred leaving me, abandoning me. He decided to bring all that joy and that wellness that I felt when I was with him into my life, just to take them away all of a sudden, like a bolt from the blue. Choi Chanhee showed me how to breathe and then he left and took all the oxygen with him, leaving me struggling for air, my lungs burning with every attempt to breathe again.</p><p>There are thousands of nights where, during just one year of his absence, I dreamt of having him with me, of being him and I as always, the same as ever, happy and carefree… He had never been happy and carefree though, and I had never known.</p><p>I asked myself, during this years, if I had ever really known Chanhee. I mean, if he wasn’t happy like he showed, then how was he? Who was the one i’ve known for an entire decade? Was everything he showed me fake? Did I ever make him happy? Clearly not enough to keep him from swallowing almost a whole bottle of sleeping pills, with some soju, before going to sleep in the night of 27<sup>th</sup> of April of 2019.</p><p>I still can’t believe it, he drank almost half a bottle of soju; him who hate even just the smell of alcohol. I still can’t get over how much he wanted to end his life, the sufferings and the pain. I never imagined that this would be the way Choi Chanhee would leave this world. When my mom told me the news, in the late morning of the day after, I bursted out laughing because what she was saying was absolutely absurd to me.</p><p>Who could believe it? Choi Chanhee killed himself at the age of twenty-one, impossible! He would have died from ageing at ninety or more, happy, surrounded by his family and I would have waited him in paradise or whatever comes after death, because I obviously would have been gone before him! But reality was that he was gone like this, numb from drugs and alcohol, alone and sad in his bed, the day after his twenty-first birthday. I still don’t want to believe that’s the reality.</p><p>Now of Choi Chanhee I only have the memories in my mind, that sooner or later will fade despite I will try to keep them as vivid as possible until my very last breath; I have the thousands photos on my notebook and these two polaroids that I continue to study as if they could somehow bring him back to life. But they can’t, and I keep feeling like the ground was missing under my feet, while I get up from our bench and begin walking towards my house, deciding that for today I can stop torturing myself with our memories.</p><p>I walk, but my eyes keep looking at the photos, at his smile, at his eyes, because my feet already know the way home; or maybe it’s my heart that knows the way home, because when I look up from my hands, what’s in front of me is blinding me, contrasting the dark of the night sometimes interrupted by the faint light of the street lights. My hands clasp around the photos and soon after it’s just the darkness that swallows me. <em>In a moment, I’m again in his arms.</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Story written on 08/14/2020</p><p>Translation finished on 08/19/2020</p><p>(2.675 words)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you liked the story!<br/>If you did please leave kudos and comments to let me know!</p><p>I’m sorry if there are some language mistakes but it’s really difficult to translate something that I first thought in Italian, so please be kind!</p><p>Bye bye, Beatrix&lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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